Saturday, April 16, 2011

Still Eating Factory Meat? Consider this...

You read that right. HALF of the meat on the grocery stores in the United States may be carrying superbug infections. To anyone who has looked into the way that meat is produced, this should not be surprising. However, seeing it confirmed with hard numbers is somewhat jarring anyway. They didn't say anything about eggs and dairy, but I would expect similar results there based on similarities in the production methods used.

If you are still buying factory meat, please stop! Not only is it bad for you nutritionally due to various nutrient imbalances brought on by a grain diet, but it is actually dangerous to eat. Additionally, when you buy that stuff, you're giving that production model the means to continue operations and even to expand. Find a grass-based operation in your area, and buy from there. It will be more expensive up front, but you're saving a bundle over the long run if you factor on the medical bills! I believe that the disease-ridden, filthy CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) will end up being among the worst hazards to human health within the next 50 years due to the practice of breeding highly resistant and virulent strains of pathogenic organisms. Given the falling pace of antibiotic discoveries, the proliferation of resistant pathogens, and the prevalence of constant-low-dose antibiotics in meat production, it seems inevitable that we will suffer unstoppable epidemics within decades (maybe less than a decade). Even if new antibiotics are discovered, we will not be solving the problem, only adding another flaming chainsaw to the collection we're already juggling. With our modern population densities and atrocious average nutrition, a drug resistant bacterial epidemic could make the plague years in Europe look like a summer picnic.

Factory meat is a threat to health and the environment. We have to stop using it!